Touring the Japanese LED-Lit Town

A tour of the "Azabu no Oka" in the Aichi prefecture of Japan reveals the viability of using LED lighting in residential areas.

Last October 2008, it was announced that a town called "Azabu no Oka" in the Aichi prefecture of Japan would be using purely LED lights within its vicinity. Similarly, we were notified even earlier on that the Big Apple will venture into using LED lighting in the future. Since LED lights haven't been used in that large of a scale before, questions remain on the technology's viability to be used as sole light sources for towns and cities. To get a glimpse of how a residential area would fare using only LED lighting, Nikkei Electronics toured "Azabu no Oka" at night.

According to source, they "can't say [the town at night is] bright, but it is as bright as it needs to be." The LED lights are placed in strategic locations to illuminate wide areas and prevent glaring, which isn't ideal for residential lighting. High-luminance street lights were only used for necessary areas; everywhere else gets the ordinary LED lamp, supplemented by LED lights from the houses themselves. The lights are also plugged into AC 100V power supplies, so the LEDs' performance won't be affected by deteriorating AC-DC adapters. All these efforts into optimizing the LED lights supposedly lower power consumption attributed to lighting by 75 percent.

As of now, there are 21 houses already built out of the proposed 204 in the area. For more details about the LED lights and solar and wind energy sources of Azabu no Oka, check out Nikkei's feature on the LED Town (part 1, part 2, part 3).